Brazilian market for plastics machinery

Reason enough to have a close look at the Brazilian market for plastics machinery. This is why Euromap, in co-operation with the Gesellschaft zur Förderung des Maschinenbaues, gave MaxiQuim, the largest Brazilian consulting company for the chemical industry, the order to analyse the current machine installations and to evaluate the prospects for the future.

As a first market segment, the Brazilian packaging industry was analysed. Therefore, MaxiQuim interviewed 75 companies producing consumption and industrial packages. The market is dominated by smaller companies with up to 100 employees and a capacity below 5,000 kton of processed material per year. With an average age of 10 years of the machines, the situation in Brazil is similar to Europe.

The economic recession in recent years has affected investments and the machine utilisation rate was relatively low (average 75 per cent). However, 40 per cent of the companies plan investments in the next five years, partly more than €1m.

For injection moulding, higher investments are expected than for extrusion. In total, future investments depend on an effective resumption of the machine utilisation rate. Higher value-added products such as multi-layer flexible packaging are identified as a future trend. Consequently, the quality of the machine has been mentioned as a most important purchasing factor, followed by the price.

Although an increasing level of automation and productivity is requested, Industry 4.0 (smart factory) has not really reached Brazil yet.

Euromap plans to conduct studies for updating the figures and findings and for regarding other segments, including the automotive industry.

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